Jon Parkin and Timothy Stanton (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780197265406
- eISBN:
- 9780191760457
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265406.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This book examines the relationship between natural law and toleration during the Early Enlightenment. Modern discussion of tolerationist theories during this period can suggest that such ideas were ...
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This book examines the relationship between natural law and toleration during the Early Enlightenment. Modern discussion of tolerationist theories during this period can suggest that such ideas were articulated in an essentially secular and individualist mode. In fact some of the most important discussions of toleration at this time emerged from writers who were committed to a more complex structure of assumption and belief in which natural law ideas were foundational. The consequences of this fact for theories of toleration have not (until now) been systematically investigated. This book provides new insights into the relationship between natural law and toleration in the work of Samuel Pufendorf, John Locke, Christian Thomasius, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Jean Barbeyrac, and Francis Hutcheson. Taken together the chapters uncover the diverse ways in which the distinctive natural law arguments helped to structure accounts of toleration that remain important for us today.Less
This book examines the relationship between natural law and toleration during the Early Enlightenment. Modern discussion of tolerationist theories during this period can suggest that such ideas were articulated in an essentially secular and individualist mode. In fact some of the most important discussions of toleration at this time emerged from writers who were committed to a more complex structure of assumption and belief in which natural law ideas were foundational. The consequences of this fact for theories of toleration have not (until now) been systematically investigated. This book provides new insights into the relationship between natural law and toleration in the work of Samuel Pufendorf, John Locke, Christian Thomasius, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Jean Barbeyrac, and Francis Hutcheson. Taken together the chapters uncover the diverse ways in which the distinctive natural law arguments helped to structure accounts of toleration that remain important for us today.
Ian Hunter
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474449229
- eISBN:
- 9781474460200
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474449229.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Christian Thomasius’s natural law works are usually interpreted as providing a philosophical theory for his positive public law treatises on church and constitutional law. This chapter argues to the ...
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Christian Thomasius’s natural law works are usually interpreted as providing a philosophical theory for his positive public law treatises on church and constitutional law. This chapter argues to the contrary that Thomasius’s public law writings are founded not in his natural law but in positive imperial public law as this was received in the state of Brandenburg-Prussia. In this context, the central role of his natural law was as a program for the pedagogical formation of law students.Less
Christian Thomasius’s natural law works are usually interpreted as providing a philosophical theory for his positive public law treatises on church and constitutional law. This chapter argues to the contrary that Thomasius’s public law writings are founded not in his natural law but in positive imperial public law as this was received in the state of Brandenburg-Prussia. In this context, the central role of his natural law was as a program for the pedagogical formation of law students.
Mads Langballe Jensen
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474449229
- eISBN:
- 9781474460200
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474449229.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter discusses the earliest teaching of post-grotian natural law by Henrik Weghorst and Christian Reitzer in Copenhagen in the decades around 1700. This teaching has often been presented as ...
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This chapter discusses the earliest teaching of post-grotian natural law by Henrik Weghorst and Christian Reitzer in Copenhagen in the decades around 1700. This teaching has often been presented as merely derivative of the ideas of Hugo Grotius or Samuel Pufendorf. In contrast, this chapter argues that Weghorst and Reitzer developed two very different, and antagonistic, forms of natural law, reflecting academic teaching in Kiel and in Halle. However, it also shows how Weghorst and Reitzer illustrate the common ground of much Lutheran natural law theorising in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Thus, for all their differences, both gave primacy to natural law and focused on duties, rather than rights, as constitutive of social and political life.Less
This chapter discusses the earliest teaching of post-grotian natural law by Henrik Weghorst and Christian Reitzer in Copenhagen in the decades around 1700. This teaching has often been presented as merely derivative of the ideas of Hugo Grotius or Samuel Pufendorf. In contrast, this chapter argues that Weghorst and Reitzer developed two very different, and antagonistic, forms of natural law, reflecting academic teaching in Kiel and in Halle. However, it also shows how Weghorst and Reitzer illustrate the common ground of much Lutheran natural law theorising in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Thus, for all their differences, both gave primacy to natural law and focused on duties, rather than rights, as constitutive of social and political life.
Elisabeth Weber
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823249923
- eISBN:
- 9780823252626
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823249923.003.0014
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Derrida describes compassion as a “fundamental mode of living together”. In this essay it is contrasted with “stealth torture”, which leaves no visible traces and succeeds in systematically ...
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Derrida describes compassion as a “fundamental mode of living together”. In this essay it is contrasted with “stealth torture”, which leaves no visible traces and succeeds in systematically undermining compassion with the victim, in both the community of the perpetrator and of the victim. In Derrida's text, the Hebrew concept of Rachamim plays a decisive role in combination with “perhaps”. On the one hand “rachamim”, “compassion”, forms the plural of “rechem”, “womb”, while being attributed to male figures (including in Judaism and Islam, to God himself); on the other, the word “perhaps” determines Derrida's thought of the future. Torture assaults the “strangeness to oneself” that the “self” is by forcing the victim to betray what could be called compassion for oneself. Derrida's argument resonates with a powerful voice against torture of the early Enlightenment, Christian Thomasius, who identifies such self-betrayal as constitutive of torture. With the iconic image from Abu Ghraib which in intelligence circles is called “crucifixion”, we might be facing a return of the repressed foundation of the United States in a symbol of which a key aspect has been forgotten: That crucifixion was abhorred by the peoples of Antiquity and by Islam as the worst of executions.Less
Derrida describes compassion as a “fundamental mode of living together”. In this essay it is contrasted with “stealth torture”, which leaves no visible traces and succeeds in systematically undermining compassion with the victim, in both the community of the perpetrator and of the victim. In Derrida's text, the Hebrew concept of Rachamim plays a decisive role in combination with “perhaps”. On the one hand “rachamim”, “compassion”, forms the plural of “rechem”, “womb”, while being attributed to male figures (including in Judaism and Islam, to God himself); on the other, the word “perhaps” determines Derrida's thought of the future. Torture assaults the “strangeness to oneself” that the “self” is by forcing the victim to betray what could be called compassion for oneself. Derrida's argument resonates with a powerful voice against torture of the early Enlightenment, Christian Thomasius, who identifies such self-betrayal as constitutive of torture. With the iconic image from Abu Ghraib which in intelligence circles is called “crucifixion”, we might be facing a return of the repressed foundation of the United States in a symbol of which a key aspect has been forgotten: That crucifixion was abhorred by the peoples of Antiquity and by Islam as the worst of executions.
